Noel Flood worked as an advance rigger on many of the country’s best-known film and television programmes. In 2015, he started working on the television series Penny Dreadful and followed it up with stints on Into the Badlands and the sixth season of Vikings. His hourly rate of pay was €25.12.  

Like his colleagues, Flood was employed for the duration that a show or a film was in production. When it finished, so too did his work. When production restarted, he started again. It was just the way of things. 

To comply with the requirements of the Section 481 film tax credit, Flood was generally paid by a special purpose vehicle set up to manage the production. In most cases, however, he was working for Morgan O’Sullivan and the late James Flynn, two of the country’s most successful television producers and the team behind Metropolitan Films. 

It is difficult to overstate the importance and influence of O’Sullivan and his late business partner on the television production sector in Ireland. In a sense, they also created the industry, convincing international outfitters to come to Ireland and benefit from various tax breaks. 

However, Flood would later tell the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) that he has been given no work since he was laid off on March 16, 2018 at the end of the sixth season of Vikings. While production started again in November 2019 on a follow-up show called Valhalla, he says he was not offered work.  

In his testimony, he said he believed that the reason he was not called back to work is because of his membership in the Irish Film Workers Association (IFWA), a trade union.

Raymond Lyons tells a similar story. He worked as a stagehand on films and television programmes developed by Metropolitan Film Productions since 2015 when he started working on the post-apocalyptic series Into the Badlands. At his hearing, he said that he normally worked around 54 hours a week, and, by June 2018, his hourly rate of pay was €21.35.  

Lyons said that he has been given no work since he was laid off on June 22, 2018, at the end of the production of season three of the series. Production started up again in late 2019, but he was not offered work. Once again, he believes that the reason he was not called back to work is because of his membership in IFWA.

William Hanlon worked as a plasterer in the construction department on films and television programmes developed by Metropolitan Films since 2004, when he worked on the production of a film called Kitchen.  At his hearing, he said that he normally worked around 54 hours a week.  His hourly rate of pay was €25.12. During his hearing at the WRC, Hanlon said that he had been given no work since he was laid off on June 15, 2018, at the end of a production of Badlands 3.  

Work started up again in November 2019 but he was not offered work. He believes that the reason he was not called back is because of his IFWA membership.

Hanlon, in his testimony, said IFWA became “a dirty name” in the workplace after an appearance before an Oireachtas committee by IFWA shop steward John Arkins in 2018.

Between December 2019 and October 2021, Hanlon and 38 colleagues in IFWA submitted complaints to the WRC under various employment law statutes. In December 2021, a small sample of complaints were heard under the Protection of Employees (Fixed-Term Work) Act 2003 and the Unfair Dismissals Act 1977.  

Initial decisions on a sample group of complaints were issued in April 2022 – in many cases, it was determined that the claims had been made too late. 

Hearings were then scheduled for the remaining complaints between December 2022 and June 2023.

At the various hearings, it was stated that James Flynn had four meetings with IFWA to discuss the terms and conditions of its members between November 2018 and March 2019. According to Liz Murray of the IFWA, this was to consider a mechanism whereby their service would be recognised.  

On November 25, 2018, Murray wrote to Flynn, summarising their discussions at a meeting the previous week and expressing concern about the departure from the “longest service first” practice for hiring IFWA members.  

At a meeting in February 2019, the union said that Flynn undertook to speak to the heads of departments and managers about the service of the workers. However, on March 9, 2019, Murray received a letter signed by several IFWA members informing her that they were resigning from the association. The letter stated:

“We the undersigned wish to formally notify you that we are resigning our membership with the union. We feel that membership of IFWA will be detrimental to any future employment. Please accept this letter as our official notice of resignation effective immediately.”

In evidence, the various complainants said that the construction workers who resigned from IFWA and were willing to forgo their entitlements were called back to work. Meanwhile, they were not.

Metropolitan has denied any wrongdoing. In its submissions, it said that workers were not employed by Metropolitan but by special purpose vehicles that handled individual productions. They were fixed-term contracts for the duration of the production. 

In submissions on one of the claims, an Ibec industrial relations executive said the individual companies were “in no way a circumvention of employment rights” – calling the film business “a freelance industry, not just for cast and crew, but for producers too”.

In recent weeks, the WRC has made public an initial tranche of decisions awarding €434,216 against Metropolitan Films International Ltd to some members of the union. 

In 13 cases decided so far, the commission told Metropolitan to pay each of the workers €5,000 in compensation for the failure to provide a written statement setting out the reasons for employing them on a specified purpose contract in breach of employment law. 

Ten of those workers also received €25,000 for penalisation by way of dismissal for attempting to assert their entitlement to a fixed-term contract.

The row in the sector has been rumbling for years, with producers claiming they need flexibility for individual productions. However, the recent WRC rulings have cast a new light on the industrial battle.

It also comes at a time when the government is amplifying efforts to grow the sector.  

Previously, the Section 481 tax relief offered a 32 per cent corporation tax credit on qualifying expenditure for films or television productions made in Ireland. This was up to a limit of €70 million per project.

In Budget 2024, the cap has now been raised to €125 million, while the Government also said it was assessing the case for an incentive to help the unscripted production sector, producers of so-called shiny floor shows. 

“Top quality content is being made in Ireland largely due to the funding offered through the Section 481 Film Tax Credit,” the Minister for Finance Michael McGrath said in his budget speech, adding: “Such productions provide a tangible economic benefit to our country, through jobs, skills development, regional development and spend on local goods and services. They are also vital in the promotion of Irish culture to audiences at home and abroad.”

McGrath is right, of course. But to really maximise the potential of the sector, industrial peace needs to break out soon. 

*****

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